The Breaking Dawn Dress Took Six Months To Design
Carolina Herrera is most famous for her celebrity clientele and her distinct, clean, feminine style – Renee Zellweger is her muse – but recently the designer had an altogether different challenge.
She had to design the Royal Wedding Dress for teens – the gown for Bella Swan’s wedding in the new Twilight movie.
The film has been viciously panned by critics, but the dress worn by Kristen Stewart has garnered praise for being the ultimate youthful, pretty dress – and it certainly took Herrera effort to conceive.
She revealed at the film’s premiere that it actually took her six months to design – almost the same amount of time given to Sarah Burton to design Kate Middleton’s ornate wedding gown earlier this year. She sketched intensely and felt pressure from the studio and the hype surrounding the films to make it perfect.
She apparently did research using the descriptions from the book, and focussed on something ‘magical’ and ‘innocent’.
Given that Herrera has also designed wedding gowns for Amy Smart and Christina Hendricks, it will be interesting to see if any celebrity women come in to her atelier and request ‘a Bella’ for their own nuptials.
Would you wear something similar to the Herrera gown? (It will be on sale in Herrera boutiques soon.)
Image: One of Herrera’s bridal designs.
Dita Von Teese For Target: Your Exclusive Sneak Peek
Vintage lingerie – is there a more romantic gift idea for Christmas?
Luckily Dita Von Teese is solving the problem of how to source it – she’s doing an exclusive line with Australian Target, based on her own vintage lingerie collection.
It will be called Von Follies by Dita Von Teese, and if you’ve seen her range for Wonderbra – which was one of the brand’s biggest-selling lines in recent years – you know it’s going to be in high demand.
Vintage-inspired 1940s-style lingerie emphasises luxurious cuts rather than skimpiness. It’s all about the fabrics and the details – and, of course, the corsets.
Bonds easy-to-wear this is not, but we can’t imagine a better way to celebrate your body in the festive season.
And the best bit? It’s for all sizes up to 20 and an E-cup – which can be a real problem when it comes to lingerie.
Fitted corsets range from $79.00 upwards, but you can get your hands on a pair of panties for only $17.00.
Will you be adding Von Follies to your underwear wardrobe, or giving them to somebody special?
Image: Dita Von Teese in her Von Follies range.
Alber Elbaz Designs Claridge’s Christmas Tree
Ever felt that your Christmas decorations lacked a little Vogue-esque flair?
Well, Claridge’s, the famous hotel in London, has solved that particular problem in a novel fashion – by asking Alber Elbaz, the stylishly bow-tied head designer of Lanvin, to design their Christmas tree.
Lanvin is one of the most effortlessly glamourous dress lines on the runways, with a particularly movie-star chic feel, and a love of bows, silks and intricate details. It languished before Elbaz took it over and revamped it radically several years ago.
The Claridges tree will be a sight to behold.
Elbaz has promised a “colourful and whimsical” tree, one that captures the spirit of Lanvin – “an infusion of tradition and modernity”.
THe decorations? Marionettes – wearing Elbaz’s interpretation of the famous Claridge’s uniform. It’s the Nutcracker gone high-end British style. Claridge’s is famous for its afternoon tea, so many people coming in after their Christmas shopping for a spot of reviving Earl Grey will be confronted with Lanvin’s delicious festive display.
Elbaz is also writing a book about Lanvin’s creative processes, at a massive 700 pages long.
Will you take inspiration from Elbaz and put some marionettes on your tree this year?
Image: Alber Elbaz.
Been Wearing Sky-Scraper Heels? It’s The Economy
Typically, in fashion, there are certain ‘indicators’ about economic health and what women are willing to buy even in the most dire of circumstances.
Of course, sometimes they’re entirely made up.
The famous hem-length theory – that hemlines get higher as the economy gets better – originated in the 1920s, when flappers started wearing radically short skirts in response to female emancipation and general good times.
Rescu. thinks that maybe you’d wear shorter skirts in harder times because they involve less fabric, but hey, we’re not economists.
And then there’s the lipstick theory – that lipstick is one of the sole items invulnerable to recessions, because it’s cheap and offers an instant ‘boost’.
However, researchers at IBM now claim to have discovered another index – heel height.
Apparently, the latest recession has been marked by a skyrocketing in heels to patently absurd heights. The newest range of heels on the catwalks are a bit more modest, so following this logic, the economy must be recovering.
There are a great deal of female-beauty-to-economy indexes- kind souls have done studies on the weight of Playboy bunnies in hard times, for instance – but they’re all based on the idea that in stressful economic periods, women want to indulge in cheaper ways. Hence lipsticks – and now higher heels.
If you twist your ankle, though, you’ll be seeing the recession through in ballet flats.
Image: Christian Louboutin heels
